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The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

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Re: The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

#51

Post by BoorishBears »

baq wrote: post #50
BoorishBears wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD fans like to separate RTG from AMD, but anecdotally, I just got a Vega 64 GPU and it's horrible. Loud, constant crashes, my desktop freezes when a video starts playing, etc. Stuff like that makes me unwilling to go with AMD when I have a choice. I view them as offering competitive performance on paper but completely falling short when it comes to reliability.

> constant crashes, my desktop freezes when a video starts playing my r9 270 started doing that and died completely (as in, stopped POSTing) a couple weeks later. i'd try to RMA.

The freezing is well documented with Vega 64, it happens stops when Hardware Acceleration is disabled but I can't (easily) change that in anything other than my browser

The crashes seem to be manifesting the heat issues it has. Even at stock voltage and power it hits 80 degrees and starts running into stability/throttling issues

Re: The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

#52

Post by paulmd »

tylerjd wrote: post #27
coredog64 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but maybe he's talking about the kernel panic that some users are getting during heavy-duty compilation workloads. https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/hardware/processors-me...

Newer steppings of Ryzen have a fix applied, and AMD is allowing people to RMA those processors affected. Threadripper is unaffected by the bug. Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=new-ryze...

AMD has never stated that there is a fix for this. If you look at the link you posted, this is Larabel making this claim on the basis that he hasn't seen any forum posts noting this problem on samples manufactured after week 25. Quote:

> AMD has not provided an official public explanation of the fundamental problem, but from those in our forums and elsewhere, it appears to affect Ryzen CPUs manufactured prior to week 25.

This problem only affects a minority of chips in the first place (likely a litho flaw in the cache section), it's probable that Larabel's second CPU just didn't happen to be one of the ones with problems. And Week 25 ends June 25, i.e. stock for these date ranges has hardly even made it through packaging/distribution to end users let alone been extensively tested yet.

Larabel is jumping the gun on insufficient evidence and people are racing to make the claim that AMD has fixed this, when that's far from the case. AMD certainly hasn't made any statements to this effect.

AMD is RMA'ing afflicted units, which is really all that can be done until they get a new stepping out. But I've seen no evidence that this is actually fixed.

Re: The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

#53

Post by paulmd »

quickben wrote: post #44
BoorishBears wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD fans like to separate RTG from AMD, but anecdotally, I just got a Vega 64 GPU and it's horrible. Loud, constant crashes, my desktop freezes when a video starts playing, etc. Stuff like that makes me unwilling to go with AMD when I have a choice. I view them as offering competitive performance on paper but completely falling short when it comes to reliability.

On another hand, in the cpu space, I went to top of the line Intel CPU overheating and throttling, to 8 core Ryzen, doing 45 celsius at 100 percent load and almost 4ghz across 8 cores. Stuff like Intel unable to perform below 80 degrees on 4 cores, makes people switch with ease .

> I went to top of the line Intel CPU overheating and throttling

Frankly I've never heard of a 6950X overheating and throttling, the lid is soldered on those processors. Sounds like a personal problem.

Re: The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

#54

Post by BoorishBears »

quickben wrote: post #44
BoorishBears wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD fans like to separate RTG from AMD, but anecdotally, I just got a Vega 64 GPU and it's horrible. Loud, constant crashes, my desktop freezes when a video starts playing, etc. Stuff like that makes me unwilling to go with AMD when I have a choice. I view them as offering competitive performance on paper but completely falling short when it comes to reliability.

On another hand, in the cpu space, I went to top of the line Intel CPU overheating and throttling, to 8 core Ryzen, doing 45 celsius at 100 percent load and almost 4ghz across 8 cores. Stuff like Intel unable to perform below 80 degrees on 4 cores, makes people switch with ease .

The top of the line Intel CPU comparable to an 8 core Ryzen CPU is probably the 7700k, which has a higher absolute power draw "ceiling", but also has better performance and higher clocks to match.

I think Intel's value based on performance isn't good compared to Ryzen, but the product isn't inherently flawed, and that combined with AMD's shaky history is enough to keep myself, and lots of people I know from switching. (Right now stories of RMAs for the Risen GCC crash bug taking ages are popping up)

Re: The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

#55

Post by abakker »

tengbretson wrote: post #25
douglasfshearer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. Replace IBM with Intel for the 2010s version.

And yet there are still people out there buying IBM and somehow not getting fired for it.

Do you frequently see people getting fired for purchasing decisions?

Re: The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

#57

Post by agumonkey »

std_throwaway wrote: post #37

Q: Why is Intel charging so much? A: Because enough people pay. Q: Why do people pay so much? Why do they pay a high premium for top performance? A: Because, considering all factors, it's worth that much for them. For many it's too much but for many others it's ok. Q: But it's the same silicon! A: Manufacturing cost plays little role when the price is not dictated by a race to the bottom between different manufacture…

btw it there a name for studying the value of "price" ? or is it just economics ? the history of the difference between cost (material, employees) and sale price.

Re: The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

#58

Post by topspin »

Retric wrote: post #7
imtringued wrote: post #5

Server CPUs are way too cheap compared to the remaining parts of the server. Paying 10% more in exchange for software compatibility is a steal.

What software compatibility issue?

A several people have replied to you by mentioning the Ryzen kernel panics. That's a thing and it's getting fixed by hook or by crook, but it's not everything. Here[1] is an example; Ryzen only received no-workarounds-needed support for ESXi 30 days ago. Another[1]; you can't monitor CPU temps in Linux yet for lack of driver support. That sort of thing is a non-starter in a cloud data center when you're managing megawatts. The truth is that the 'enterprise' has been wrapped around the Intel axle for years and AMD has a lot of catch up to do before it has parity with Intel.

There are enterprise people that will adopt AMD for the shear $/compute value, but until you can find rackable Dell SKUs and Supermicro server motherboards with AMD sockets and the whole 'enterprise' software stack is fully ironed out Intel can and will command a premium. It will happen, eventually (assuming AMD continues to compete,) but it's not here yet.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6que0q/esxi_65_now_wor... [2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-ryzen...

Re: The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

#59

Post by ianai »

agumonkey wrote: post #57
std_throwaway wrote: post #37

Q: Why is Intel charging so much? A: Because enough people pay. Q: Why do people pay so much? Why do they pay a high premium for top performance? A: Because, considering all factors, it's worth that much for them. For many it's too much but for many others it's ok. Q: But it's the same silicon! A: Manufacturing cost plays little role when the price is not dictated by a race to the bottom between different manufacture…

btw it there a name for studying the value of "price" ? or is it just economics ? the history of the difference between cost (material, employees) and sale price.

I've got at least one book titled price economics. Basically that's a huge area in economics. There are both micro and macro contributions to price. It's also the one communicative factor between suppliers and demanders.

Re: The Huge Premium Intel Is Charging for Skylake Xeons

#60

Post by pjmlp »

ajross wrote: post #41
std_throwaway wrote: post #37

Q: Why is Intel charging so much? A: Because enough people pay. Q: Why do people pay so much? Why do they pay a high premium for top performance? A: Because, considering all factors, it's worth that much for them. For many it's too much but for many others it's ok. Q: But it's the same silicon! A: Manufacturing cost plays little role when the price is not dictated by a race to the bottom between different manufacture…

That's really not what the article is about at all. It's talking about the history of the tech industry and associating this kind of price motion with "peak" revenue for given hardware products. Your same answer would apply to IBM's mainframes in 1990 and Sun's servers in 2001 too, and the point of the article is to associate Intel's current position with those products, which clearly reached peaks at those moments.…

Another example missing in the article was the graphics workstations with SGI.
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